Interview, Max Tundra

Artist: Max Tundra
Source: Liam Griffin

Londoner Ben Jacobs makes computer-structured pop under the name Max Tundra and recently released his third album Parallax Error Beheads You. His songs are cheerful, strange and funny. He combines technical complexity with pop's approachability and ends up with tracks that make you laugh, frown and dance. Drop-d caught up with Max for a chat before he played a wild and engaging show at The Roisin Dubh recently.

Drop-d: When did you first start making music?

Max Tundra: When I was very young, six years old or something at home messing with things banging around. We had a piano as well. I was messing around really and I'm still messing around today.

Drop-d: What influences your music?

Max: I'm quite often motivated by music that I don't really like. I might hear an awful song on the radio and feel that I have got to make something to give people a choice. Then sometimes I hear something that I really love and I decide that I'm not going to be really like them at all.

Drop-d: So your reaction to bad music pushes you on?

Max: Yeah, I know that I can do better. It isn't always a musical thing [that inspires me] it might be the kind of day that I had, food I had, something to do with the girl I'm seeing at the time.

Drop-d: What are the influences on the technical side as opposed to the lyrical side of your music?

Max: Its very important for me to be as original as possible, but if you listen to a Max Tundra track it's always possible to see that I listen to Frank Zappa on the one side and maybe a Destiny's Child song as well; there isn't any conscious sort of influence to be like another act but if people hear certain influences it means that I've been listening to, say, Steely Dan over the previous week etc.

Clicky for the rest of the interview.